In Malawi, Braille books are limited, as are large print books for visually impaired learners.
A blind or visually impaired student is doubly disadvantaged in the education system. Firstly, because of their disability. Secondly, because the books that are required for their study are not available to them.
At the start of this project, there were only six blind learners attending university in Malawi, a country with a population of sixteen million. 4% of the population has a debilitating visual impairment.
The 'Making Wonders' project was named in recognition of a comment made by a member of staff at Montfort College, in Malawi. He said, "With the talking computers we will make wonders".
The aim of 'Making Wonders' was to use assistive technology to enhance the education of blind and low-vision learners in Malawi. The focus was on using computers with appropriate software and additional hardware to enable blind learners to produce work that can be marked by a sighted teacher. It also enabled resources to be created by specialist teachers, in large print and Braille for the children.
Each school received:
- at least two computers
- an uninterruptable power supply for each computer
- a Braille printer
- two scanners
- a laser printer
The software was designed to make a standard personal computer usable by a blind or low-vision learner. It included:
- screen reader (JAWS)
- screen magnifier (ZoomText)
- scan and read Optical Character Recognition (OCR) programme (Kurzweil)
- a touch typing tutor
The project grew to include:
- eleven primary schools
- twelve secondary schools
- six teacher training colleges
- three universities
One indicator of our success was that the number of blind learners at the university in Malawi grew from six to thirty, by the time the project ended in 2017.